Monday, June 16, 2008

3000toys.com "Green" Initiative

3000toys.com is actively seeking ways to become more “Green” and reduce our impact on the environment. For years we have sought to re-use as many of our corrugated cardboard boxes as possible. Almost all of our products arrive in larger boxes of 6, 12, or more pieces. These larger boxes are re-used for shipping orders to customers whenever possible. This results in a savings that helps keep our fulfillment costs to a minimum. However it also lowers our need for newly manufactured boxes and thereby reduces the amount of corrugate that ends up in land-fills.

Our latest “Green” initiative involves drastically reducing our use of those dreaded packing peanuts. Over the next several weeks we will be cutting our styrofoam peanut consumption by 80-90%. At the center of making this happen will be several new machines that take a special recycled paper and crumple it up into an effective packing material. Our testing has proven that the crumpled paper provides excellent protection for the majority of the products we ship, and does so for the same cost or less than the old peanuts. Additionally, our customers will find the paper much easier to deal with after they receive their order than the often messy peanuts were. The paper can be recycled again or disposed of through traditional means. In ether case the total impact is much lower than the chemically based peanuts that take years to break down.